DC Black Label got its very own panel this year in one of the biggest rooms at San Diego Comic-Con Saturday morning. The panel was excitingly titled “Building the Future of Super Heroes with DC Black Label,” further putting focus and importance on the year-old label. The panel was moderated by executive editor for DC Black Label Mark Doyle with panelists Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, John Romita Jr., Kami Garcia, and Jeff Lemire.

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Out October 2nd, Kami Garcia talked about her book Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity drawn by Mike Mayhew and Mico Suayan. “What’s the trigger for a boy that would turn him into the Joker?” Garcia asked. The project was considered as a YA graphic novel, but it was too adult. Garcia broke down how the idea came about and how it’s based on real-world crimes and criminal investigation. Harley Quinn is a criminal profiler and is hunting down a new kind of killer. The root of the book came from Garcia’s interest in becoming a killer. “I want to know how do you become something. How do you get to that place?” Garcia said.

Joker is scarier to Garcia than a common murderer because he likes to murder. Joker is incredibly intelligent, dangerous, and he has an anarchist inside of him. “He would hate social media,” Garcia said. The adversary to him in the book is Harley. Meanwhile, Harley Quinn is super cool and as Garcia puts it, “is a lot like me.”

Garcia admitted this is a tough book on the artists since so much is based on real life.

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